An express server with various api endpoints for testing 🧪💥🤓
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This project provides a simple server to test and learn about API requests. Some tools to test the API include curl if you prefer testing via your command line interface or POSTMAN which simplifies requests via a GUI. Alternatively, if you like development on VS Code, thunderclient is another viable option which can be downloaded as an extension.
For reference, sample curl requests are provided in the Endpoints section below.
The easiest way to get started is by leveraging the devcontainer in this repo. To do so, you will need a Container Engine like Docker installed and running. For Docker, the easiest way to start the container engine is via Docker Desktop.
The devcontainer provided is setup for use on Visual Studio Code. You should have it installed along with the remote development pack to enable the IDE's DevContainers functionality.
To start, open VS Code in a directory of your choice. With the terminal, clone this repository via git clone https://github.com/jgome284/api-testing.
Make sure you have your container engine running. On VS Code, open your local copy of the project and start the development container by running Dev Containers: Rebuild and Reopen In Container in the command palette. It can be accessed with the keyboard shortcut ctrl + shift + P on your keyboard.
When the Dev Container launches, install project dependencies via npm by executing the following command.
npm installIf successful, a node_modules folder should appear in your directory. To start the server for testing run the following command.
npm startThen, connect to the server on localhost:4000 ... Make use of the endpoints listed below to practice making your own requests to the api. Yay! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ🎊!
To learn more about testing, reference this article, which explains API testing via POSTMAN or curl.
Another great place to try API testing is JSONPlaceholder.com. It is a free online REST API that you can use whenever you need some fake data. It can be in a README on GitHub, for a demo on CodeSandbox, in code examples on Stack Overflow, ...or simply to test things locally.
This project's server is setup with 3 endpoints which are detailed below. To start the server run the following:
node app.js
If successful, you should see a static site deployed at the root on localhost:4000.
Note: You can use curl -i to get more information from the headers.
GET - get expressions
curl localhost:4000/expressions
POST - add expression
curl -X POST localhost:4000/expressions?name=pineapple&emoji=%F0%9F%8D%8D
GET - get expression from database by id
curl localhost:4000/expressions/1
PUT - update expression from database by id
curl -X PUT localhost:4000/expressions/1?name=cat&emoji=%F0%9F%98%BA
DELETE - delete expression from database by id
curl -X DELETE localhost:4000/expressions/1
GET - get static hello page
curl localhost:4000/hello
Note: A 🍪 is set at this endpoint which provides a snapshot of the amount of page views made to this route. The session cookie is set to expires at 1 minute of inactivity. A new Set-Cookie header is added on every GET request to this endpoint to extend the session lifetime. Cool! 😎
GET - get users
curl localhost:4000/users
POST - add user
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"user": {"username":"Joe Original", "password":"OriginalPassword1"}}' localhost:4000/users
GET - get user from database by id
curl localhost:4000/users/1